A spies' coat of arms

This post is I hope the first of many about police, army and intelligence services around the world. And if you ask me why I am doing this, the answer is simple: just for fun. Anyway, you may know of many intelligence agencies around the world, but maybe not of the Norwegian Intelligence Service, or NIS. I know nothing about them either, except for the very first episode of The Sandbaggers, where they are depicted in a badlight,annoyingly sloppy spies that are borderline amateurs. That said, I wished you could see them in more spy thrillers for one trivial reason: they have a badass coat of arms. You can see on it Odin's ravens Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory) and any intelligence service that takes inspiration from Norse mythology is okay in my book. No matter what this coat of arms has to show up in fiction some day.

SIS/MI6

I have sometimes geeky moments... This post is about one of them, which might bring me embarrassment. Because I am a James Bond fan and a Sandbaggers fan, and a Queen & Country fan, I have developed an interest about real life SIS, more commonly known as MI6. And I sometimes visit the organization's official website. Is that embarrassing? I find it fascinating, especially how unglamorous it presents itself. I blogged about MI6 before, I was thinking about writing more about it. I actually love the way the promotional videos picture SIS as this very open governmental organization, picturing its spies as competent civil servants, with fancy animation that gives it a modern, borderline funky side. There is even a page about C, with a short biography and a welcoming message from him. And we are talking about British secret services here. John Sawers does look and sound like a somewhat mild mannered civil servant. All these little details, the sober and undramatic tone, I find it surreal and oh so very interesting. As an immigrant, I browsed many governmental websites, mainly the Home Office's. But I never had fun browsing them. The website SIS, on the other hand, I just find so darn cool.

British actors and American screens

My wife found on BBC News an interesting article about British actors making it big on US TV. It is something I have noticed before, as most of my favourite TV dramas recently discovered (say The Wire or Rome) are produced by US money and US scriptwriters, but the casts are often heavy on British actors. The article mentions many reasons for this: British actors are competent but cheap, they can easily pass as American, they are also unknown in the American market, which is an asset when one wants viewers to see the character and not the actor, the US have of course more money, a bigger market, etc.

All of this is true, but there is also another element that is not mentioned in this article, but which Dominic West hinted at in another interview: US dramas are sadly now more creative than British ones, or at least they encourage more creativity. I deeply love a number of British dramas, but they go from fairly old to very old. The last British TV drama that I genuinly loved to bits was Sorted (I mentioned it here and you can find here its imdb page), which got stupidly axed by the BBC after its first season. The worst thing is that Americans have probably in proportions just as many poor and unimaginative shows as here, but they do get it right more often and there are people ready to back up good projects. Of course, they have the money to do it, but surely a good drama is no more expensive than a bad one. What I am worried about is that now that it has absorbed many British talents, and not only for the roles of badguys, one day they might also take British writers. It would be more difficult of course, as there is a cultural gap that cannot be filled as easily when writing about a different nation, but I can see a slippery slope. In any case, it is frustrating that British actors triumph in The Wire, while nothing of this caliber and of this particular genre has been made here in recent television history.

Addictive TV series

I am not a complete, hooked TV addict. Actually, I spend more time on the Internet than watching TV. Something I picked up from years of studying in university halls here without any television. I learned to do without. That said, I am addicted to some kind of TV, as long as it is intelligent fiction. Entertaining is not enough: it needs to be really smart, inventive and remain consistently so. I actually lost interest with 24, Prison Break and the likes when their plots became increasingly implausible and formulaic. I don't care if the series is brand new or not.

I already mentioned here on a few occasions the brilliant The Wire, which I watched the first season last year. I am planning to buy and watch the rest religiously. I am impatient to watch episodes written by George Pelecanos. No contemporary TV series has been as perfect (so far) as The Wire: flawless casting of unknown actors (which means that the character is more important than the name playing him/her), tight, realistic plot, the most acurate depiction of police work and criminality, brilliant characterisations, a disdain for cheap thrills and brilliant atmosphere. When it comes to crime dramas, I will always have a soft spot for Omertà (which I will try to rewatch during my next trip to Québec), but The Wire is far superior, in all aspects. Here's the first minutes of season one, with the intro:



There is also a much older and much more obscure TV series which I purchased recently: The Sandbaggers. I first heard about it in the introductions of the graphic novels series Queen & Country, as it was the inspiration for it. Like Greg Rucka's series, it is an espionnage drama based on a team of MI6 operatives, called here the Sandbaggers (in Q&C it is the Minders). It is devoid of the clichés of the genre, de-glamourised and de-mythified. The characters spend more time discussing the missions (which do not always succeed) and fighting British bureaucracy than going after KGB spies (even though the main protagonist is devoted to "the eradication of the KGB"), they drink bucket loads of coffee, smoke nervously, fight, get into arguments with their colleagues, these spies are real people. The dialogues are brilliant, sharp like razor blades, to the point. It's British drama like you'd never seen it before (or you never see anymore) and it's a shame it is not more famous. From what I read, it got a fairly important fanbase in the US, where the series was shown on PBS. There is a devoted fan website you can visit if you want to know more about the show and you can find the first episode on Youtube. Until I get season two of The Wire, I will stay hooked on The Sandbaggers. Here is the opening credit, where you can hear the only music in the show. It sets the atmosphere perfectly: